Tom,

Much of the routing remains the same.  I only played Flynn's version (hope to correct that this winter) but from the aerial I've seen and from the accounts I've heard, a number of features were changed, including elevating some holes out of the marsh plain.  

I played ACC about 15 years ago before I was even intersted in course architecture.
I remember it being a"simple"course design, very old school and a delight to play.I remember some very interesting green complexes with forced carries over marshy land that were brilliant.
Most of all I rememebr the design being very simple and very well routed...if this I now learn was a Flynn design, I would not be at all surprised

I played the old ACCC and the course after it was redone by Doak. There was a great old aura about the club when the Frasers owned it but I'd have to say the way the course is now is much better than the way it used to be.

As a for instance, they needed a good amount of fill to raise some of those back nine holes (and do a few other things) and they apparently got it by "cutting" and undulating some of the front nine holes that made those holes much more interesting to play and much more interesting to look at. Before that those fairways were basically "gunboat" flat!

The really interesting thing about ACCC's evolution is the way that Flynn "modernized" the features of a really rudimentary/penal Reid nine and even Willie Park Jr nine.

Interestingly, the routing basically remained the same through both Flynn and Doak reworking. Minor hole changes but the routing is basically similar to what it once was.

I just hope ACCC survives. The buyout of Hilton/Caesar's by Harrah's sort of makes me nervous for the long range survival of that golf course. The real estate value of that course's land has apparently been valued by "buyers" in the neighborhood of $35 million. It's pretty hard to run a golf club for long the way Harrah's might on land that valuable.

In 1903 the term "birdie" was first used at ACCC on the current 12th hole.

John Reid laid out the first nine holes and later added 18.  The original 9-hole course was about 2150 yards in length.  When he added 9 holes, he added about 150 yards to the original 9 holes.  These holes were typical of their day--geometric and primitive with chocolate drops and other repetitive mounds and flat linear bunkers.

Willie Park, Jr. revised 5 of the original Reid holes and added 9 to make a total of 27 holes.  Flynn submitted plans in December 1923 and was hired to remodel each hole.  To keep costs down and having a regard for the existing routing, Flynn kept the basic routing intact.  Flynn added large areas of undulating sandy waste areas between holes and as hazards along the lines of play, he angled greens away from the line of play while remodeling all the greens.  In effect, he modernized the existing golf course in a seaside style reminiscent of his future work at Boca Raton and Shinnecock.

Flynn's plan had a "Tournament" 18 holes and a nine-hole course.  The nine hole course, the Blue Nine, was sold off for housing by the Fraser family.

Flynn Tournament 18      Was          

1                                Reid/Park 1
2                                    Reid/Park 2
3                                    Reid/Park 3
4                                    Reid/Park 4
5                                    Reid/Park 5
6                                    Reid 6
7                                    Reid 7
8                                    New
9                                    New   
10                              Park 1
11                                   Park 2   
12                                     Park 3
13                                   Park 4
14                                   Park 5
15                              Park 6
16                                   Park 7
17                                   Park 8
18                                   Park 9

Flynn 9-hole Blue Course   Was

1                                    New   
2                                    New
3                                    Reid 13
4                                    Reid 11
5                                    New, used Reid’s 8th green
6                                    Reid 15
7                                    Reid 16
8                                    Reid 17
9                                    Reid 18

I agree with Tom Paul.  Doak's alterations were great improvements to playability with the contouring preceeding the greens and the agronomics of the back nine which constantly flooded and were raised by Doak.  Doak changed some greens and made use of the marsh in interesting ways near the finish.  It is an outstanding course that is now available and should be appreciated by anyone near the region.  By the way, in speaking with Tom Doak, he acknowledges the limitations Flynn had to engineer some of the solutions he did and thought very highly of Flynn's work and the sandy waste areas.

Public play on Monday to Thursday is $150

Willie Park advertised he added thirteen new holes to ACCC.

The nine lost to housing, was it considered the third nine or were all nines of equal strength?

What changes occured to the eighteen that survived between Flynn (1923) and the late 90's?

3 tee:  353 yards, par 4



4 tee:  144 yards, par 3

In the "Flynn box" that contained most of his original course drawings came a plan (routing map, course design, whatever one calls it) that seems clearly to have been done before Flynn worked on ACCC. Was it a plan done by Reid or Park or somebody else for either of their projects on the course? I don't know. Wayne has the drawing and maybe he could tell us. I don't remember when looking at it that it had anyone's name on it.

It did strike me when I last looked at it (maybe a year ago) how similar the routing was to the way the course was after Flynn's project (maybe 20 years ago) and before Doak's project. The fascinating thing about that plan to me, though, was how old fashioned and basically penal many of those early pre-Flynn ACC features were on that plan---eg lots of cross hazard features that're sort of the definition of the early style of "penal" architecture.

Again, did that plan show the design of Reid or Park? It's hard to say. However, it seems like Flynn basically just sort of "modernized" the feature placement and so forth on basically the same old routing. Sure, he did change a few holes in some ways but it didn't seem like that much.

The thing I do not know but maybe Wayne does is if the club had 27 holes for quite some time or if it sold that "other" early "Reid" nine and got Park to basically replace it with a new "nine"----eg sort of below and to the south (I think) of the old original Reid golf course.

How did that early plan get in Flynn's box? Obviously the club gave it to him when they hired him to redo the course. ACCC definitely was always dedicated to collecting anything and everything to do with the history of their course obviously because there's so much really old history and tradition surrounding that golf club and course from the real early days. But I don't think anyone had seen that early design plan that was in "Flynn's box" in a barn for many decades. Both the club (Hilton) and Doug Fraser were dying to get their hands on that plan because I don't believe either was ever aware of it's existence.

 Maybe we should have a GCA get together here in the late fall. I will bring Flynn along.

M-W-P;

The "look" of the bunkers at ACCC since the Doak project had been something of an issue amongst some around here. The contractor on those bunkers was Macdonald & Co. There is a good friend of mine by the name of Kye Goalby who was basically leant to the contractors, Macdonald & Co, by Doak's company. Kye worked real hard on many of the "lines" of those ACCC bunkers during that project only to have some of Macdonald's machine operators basically just wipe them out when they got into construction. This led Kye Goalby to eventually just quit the project in frustration.

Macdonald & Co is a huge Maryland contractor and one probably most in favor with the USGA etc. But it seems like they just like to do bunkers basically with machines and not as much of the type of hand-work guys like Goalby, and Doak and Hanse and Forse and some others get into.

Basically my feeling is Macdonald & Co are much better at Ross bunkers than they are with Flynn bunkers.

But having said that Flynn's actual style of bunker modus operandi as far as a "look" was concerned is pretty darn interesting and could seem quite varied depending on where he was.

Basically Flynn's policy on bunkering was to start it out pretty bland and generic looking and then plan on letting the grassing lines basically just evolve on their own. There was obviously a good reason Flynn may've gotten into that architectural style and bunker look. He was considered to be one of the very best greenskeepers in America before he concentrated full time on golf course architecture. Flynn was massively knowledgeable on various grasses and how to use them. Matter of fact he and Toomey owned their own farm in Montgomery County pretty much dedicated to that.

They did let members of their crew live on that farm too and Connie Lagerman, Flynn's daugther also said that farm sort of doubled as a place Howard Toomey's wife, a former New York show-girl could get away from the city and basically dry out. She apparently knew how to hit the sauce pretty hard as most of the others of that day did too!  

Wayne
The Park advertisement simply said:

"Country Club of Atlantic City (13 new holes)"

The Park biography claims he was involved there in 1919, only a few years before Flynn was engaged. I'm not sure if that is accurate or not.

I've seen some pictures of Reid's old Northfield course and it featured numerous cop bunkers and ditches.